Chapter 5
The Vietnicks had congregated In front of the city hall. There seemed to be more of them than had left the beach while Joe and Angel were drinking beer under the beach umbrellas, the crowd covering most of the rather large square in front of the southern plantation style city hall. Angel shrugged mentally and allowed herself to be swept along toward the fringes of the mob. A strong-voice young man was on the steps of the building, shouting his slogans, his condemnation of the government. A cordon of city police stood behind him, protecting the entrance to the building. A large, expensive looking fire tfuck blocked one street leading out of the square, firemen in helmets and slickers standing beside the tfuck. The slogans of the speaker were cheered by the crowd. Banners and placards waved.
"Let's not get any closer," Angel said.
"We can't see anything from here," Carl answered. His hand was firm on her arm, leading her forward. He and Alan began to push their way through the loosely packed fringes of the mob, working their way toward the steps of the city hall, moving in front of the street which was blocked by the fire tfuck.
"This is all right," Alan said.
Angel couldn't see a thing. She felt hemmed in, smothered by the crowd around her. She could see backs and necks and she could see Carl, standing beside her, crushed against her by the crowd. She didn't like crowds. She didn't even like going to the movies when the theater was full of people. She had a secret horror of being overwhelmed by a crowd, pushed down, trapped. She clung to Carl's strong arm for reassurance. She felt drops of perspiration form on her skin, run, drop. She wiped her eyes and listened to the ranting of the speaker and the cheers of the crowd and when Alan Govern said, "Here they come," she was so uncomfortable, so near a senseless panic that she didn't even wonder who "they" were.
To the Fortier Beach police, the riot seemed so senseless. They were used to having a certain amount of problems with the Easter influx of college students. They were ready to make a limited number of arrests after giving the kids every break. They were under orders to keep order with as little force as necessary and they were somewhat unprepared for the explosion which occurred when the group of Viet Nam veterans staged a counter demonstration, marching into the assembled crowd in a disciplined wedge, shoving students aside until, nearing the steps where the Vietnick speaker had stopped his harangue, some small spark started the fire which spread in an instant to engulf the mob, for the crowd became a mob.
"Carl, what is it?" Angel kept asking, as she felt the movement, the crush of the mob around her. "Carl, please."
And she was being moved against her will, being shoved and crushed, her voice rising in true panic now as secret fears seemed to be near realization. She could hear the screams and the shouts and the voice blaring for order over a loud speaker. She looked around her wildly and Stanley was gone along with Alan. There was only Carl and he was behind her, holding her arms, guiding her somewhere. She, being so small, her face below the level of the mass of people, could not see, could only trust him as he pushed, making a way for her through the tightly packed mass until, with a stumbling suddenness, she broke through into open space and saw the milling, battling melee which had formed around the smaller group of counter demonstrators.
Trying to regain her balance, she reached out for Carl and her hands clutched at air. A hand pushed in the small of her back and she lurched forward, caroming off two battling young men who shouted at each other as they clinched. She felt the harsh bite of concrete on her bare knee as she went down, heard the shouting, the blaring voice on the loud speaker screaming for order and then, as she struggled to her feet, looking for Carl and seeing only the whirling, mad senseless mass of people something struck her with the force of a fist, a huge, lifting, wet blow into her bare midriff as the firemen turned on their high pressure hoses.
Rolling on the gray, wet concrete, buffeted by the power of the stream of water, she screamed, her voice lost in the roar of the mob. She bounced, banged into someone on the concrete, crawled, sobbing, trying to get away from the noise and the fear.
"Angel!"
She could hear her name. The stream of water passed over her, the full force not hitting her, spray causing her to close her eyes and then she felt a powerful grip on her arms and she was being pulled to her feet. She looked up, expecting to see Carl and looked into the concerned brown eyes of Joe Howard.
"Oh," she said, as he pulled her away from the milling crowd. Around her, the mob was thinning as the police moved forward, taking the combatants into custody. Someone bumped into her, pulling her away from Joe for a moment and she screamed again, only to see him push his way to her side and put his arm around her. She took a painful blow in the side as Joe bulldozed his way through the crowd, felt salt tears form and begin to ooze from her eyes, prayed that it would end, that she would be free of the press of people, the maddened cries of the mob, the shrill blasts of police whistles and the overriding boom, boom, boom of the male voice on the loud speaker. She was sobbing openly when, at last, Joe pushed his way clear and led her, at a run, down a street away from the riot. Behind them, she heard the smash of breaking glass and turned in time to see a smiling boy throw a brick through a plate glass window. Then they were around a corner and it was as if they were in a different world. No police. No moving masses of people. No crush around her. Her hand was clasped tightly in Joe's and they were walking fast.
"Are you hurt badly?" he asked, stopping her in a store-front alcove.
"No," she said. "I don't think so."
"Nasty scratch on your knee," he said.
She glanced down. She didn't feel it, but her knee was abraded by the rough concrete, was red and raw.
"We'll stop at my room and get something for it," Joe said. "What the hell were you doing in the middle of that mass of idiots?"
"I don't know," she said truthfully. "Carl and the others. They wanted to see the excitement."
"And where was dear Carl when you needed him?"
"We got separated. We were right in the midst of it. I . . . "
"I gave you credit for more sense," Joe said. "Let those idiots do their protesting, but give them a square mile of room to do it in, that's my motto."
Ahead of them was the beach, black with people. It was hard to believe that there were so many of the Easter vacationers left on the strand, so many of them who had no part in the riot back in the town square. When she was mixed up in it, it had seemed that all the world was crushed into the square.
"I have a room here," Joe said, leading her up a walkway to an old frame, two-story house. "And the landlady is very understanding about her guests giving aid and comfort to beautiful, bruised ladies in distress.
He led her into an airless, hot hall, up a flight of stairs and into a somewhat musty smelling room with windows overlooking the strand. He put her down on the bed and told her to sit there while he rummaged through bags in one corner of the room and came up with disinfectant and a band-aid. She winced when he applied the stuff to the scratched knee. The cooling feel of his breath as he blew the afflicted spot made her laugh. The band aid was far too small for the area which had been brush burned by contact with the pavement.
"I could tear up one of the sheets and make bandages," he said, grinning at her.
"And get in bad with your understanding landlady?"
"You're right. Look, you just lie back. No, you'd better get out of that wet suit first, hear?"
"Sir!" she said, in mock protest.
"Here," he said, moving away, tossing back a white tee-shirt. "I'll wait in the John while you change into Dr. Howard's surgical gown."
She was conditioned, by the frightful experience in the sweaty crowd of the square, to obey his orders. He went into the bath, closed the door, and she stripped out of her wet two piece bathing suit, spread it on the window sill to dry and slipped into the tee-shirt. It covered her like a mother hub-bard, to her knees. It was thin enough to show the pert nipples of her well formed breasts and to show a darksome bulge just below her mid-section, but it was dry and comfortable and she was beginning to have a delayed reaction to the riot. She was shivering, her shoulders shaking uncontrolably when, after a long silence, Joe banged on the bathroom door, yelled, "Are you decent?" and looked tentatively around the door. Seeing her, huddled on the bed, arm lock around herself, head bent, lips distorted, eyes wild, he leaped across the room.
"Hey, hey," he said, his voice worried, soft. He knelt on the side of the bed and folded her in his arms. "Hey, hey," he kept repeating as the floodgates opened and she sobbed out her tensions against his shoulder. He was dressed in a faded sweatshirt and swim trunks and she made dark, wet spots on the shirt with her tears as his big hands clumsily patted her on the back and he held her close, both of them kneeling on the bed, their combined weight making the springs squeak in protest.
"Hey, hey," he kept saying. "It's all right," he said at last, when he thought he detected a change in her sobbing.
"It's all over, Angel," he whispered, as she snubbed the sobs into silence.
"I'm so sorry," she stammered, pulling away, eyes red, nose dripping tears off a pert end. "You're not a wailing wall, I know, but . . . "
"Any time, Angel," he said sincerely. "Any time you need me as a wailing wall."
"I'm all right now," she said, taking his offer of a handkerchief to wipe her eyes, her nose.
"It was enough to scare anyone," he said. "I still don't understand why you were right there in the middle of it. It just goes to show that you kind of need ole Joe Howard to look after you."
"You might be right," she said, smiling.
"Might be? I know I'm right And I'm not about to let you get out of my sight again."
"I'll have to leave sometime," she said, smiling at him. "Your roommate will be coming back or . . . "
"He's going to spend the night on the beach again," Joe said.
"I have to go back to the room to tell Stanley . . . "
"The jerk who left you on the lurch?"
"No, the blonde. That's Stanley. I rode up with her, you know."
"We'll worry about Stanley some other time," Joe said. "Are you hungry?"
"No." She had arisen from the bed and was standing. The loose tee-shirt showed blue-black woman mound, bulging breast. She was aware of his eyes on her.
"Well," he said, "I'm not letting you get out of my sight" he said weakly, his thought definitely elsewhere. A man can't look and think at the same time. "I'm going to take care of you."
"Is that a threat?" Angel said, going, in her highly emotional state, from one highly charged feeling to another, "or a promise?"